


Musical Nerds are Hot

by seashadows



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: LiveJournal Prompt, M/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seashadows/pseuds/seashadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles goes to investigate the drumming he hears, and gets more than he bargained for. </p><p>Written for sabinelagrande on Livejournal, who won my musical-guessing contest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Musical Nerds are Hot

_Bump. Bump. Bump. Bump-bump-bump-bump._  
  
This was seriously getting out of hand.   
  
Charles put down his pen and rubbed his forehead with the palm of one hand, trying to ignore the way his office walls were shaking. He’d thought that an afternoon without the band hanging around would actually _allow_ him to get some work done, but no. Nathan, Toki, and Skwisgaar were out at Dimmu Burger, so _that_ should have been helpful. Murderface was doing something in that car of his, and Pickles…well, Pickles was drumming loudly enough to be heard in Charles’s office.   
  
It was _seriously_ annoying, and unproductive to boot. And he’d put up with it for the last _two and a half hours_. On any other day, he would have just gritted his teeth and let Pickles keep drumming, but today he had about a thousand paternity waivers to go through. By hand.   
  
There were two circumstances under which he couldn’t endure paternity waivers: extreme hunger and extreme distraction. A sandwich an hour ago had gotten rid of the worst of the former, but the latter was currently pounding into his temples at about one hundred decibels. He had to do something.   
  
Setting down his pen, he stood up and went out into the hallway; from there, he’d be able to tell where that damn drumming was coming from. Sounded like it was emanating from the rec room…which meant that Pickles was probably extremely high, since he could rarely find the strength to drag his drums around Mordhaus when he was sober. Just _great_.   
  
Charles reminded himself to take in a deep breath and exhale within five seconds. He didn’t need another trip to the emergency room because of the band’s shenanigans, nor another bout of their laughter because they thought said trip to the emergency room was “fuckin’ hilariousch” (at least according to Murderface).   
  
Hyperventilation was _not_ funny. He’d have to make a new Facebones video about that, come to think of it: “Hyperventilation in the Workplace and You.” Yes, that would do nicely. The thought cheered him up, and very nearly put a smile on his face as he made his way down the wide stone corridors to the rec room.   
  
“Pickles, I can hear your drumming in my office,” he said as he walked in the doorway. “Far be it from me to impede your creative progress, but, uh, would you mind toning it down slightly?”   
  
“Can’t heeeear you!” came a drawn-out, accented shout in reply. Pickles had his drums set up slam-bang in the middle of the rec room - dangerously close to the hot tub, although he didn’t seem to care, or even know. His eyes were closed in easily-recognizable music ecstasy (thankfully, Charles realized, he wasn’t actually _on_ the stuff…this time). “Yell louder!”   
  
“I _said_ that I can hear you in my office!” Charles shouted. At this level of noise, it would probably take a bullhorn to jerk Pickles out of his concentration, and possibly not even that would help. “Could you please quiet down?”   
  
“ _What’d you say, dood? Quiet down?_ ”   
  
“YES!”   
  
“Oh, sure, sure.” All of a sudden, _miraculously_ , the drumming stopped. Pickles blew out a breath and whipped his head, throwing his dreadlocks to land neatly on his back. “What’s got ya bothered, Chief?”   
  
“I’m trying to work, Pickles, and I’d appreciate if you would stop drumming so loudly,” Charles answered. Thank goodness it was Pickles and not Murderface, or Skwisgaar; neither of them would have so much as slowed down, and they would have sworn at him to boot.   
  
“Can’t really quiet down, dood.” Pickles shrugged; his black tee threatened to slide off his skinny shoulders. “Dat’s drumming. If you try to be quiet, you got…I dunno. You got _rap_ or some shit like that.”   
  
“Huh.” Charles could feel his mouth curl up into an uncharacteristic half-smile. “We certainly wouldn’t want that, but all the same, I need to get Skwisgaar’s paternity waivers inspected and notarized.”   
  
“Aw, _dammit._ ” Pickles stuck out his bottom lip and pouted. “Can’t I just drum a little longer? I don’t wanna do it when the guys are around.”   
  
“No.” Charles crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at him. Since when was Pickles so adamant that he drum by himself? It seemed a little strange. “What are you drumming that you can’t play around the rest of the band?”   
  
“It’s naht metal.” Pickles’s pale cheeks flamed bright red, and he rubbed the back of one hand against his sweat-shiny forehead. “I don’t want ‘em knowin’ that I play stuff that isn’t all, y’know, _metal_. Y’unnerstand, right?”   
  
“Well, I don’t know,” Charles replied. “I listen to some things that might be considered un-metal.” His heartbeat quickened, experiencing a moment of reflexive panic, but he firmly stamped on that urge and put the boots to him, medium-style (and he was well aware that that was redundant, but he didn’t care).   
  
“Yeh? Whaddya listen to?” Pickles set down his drumsticks, tilting his head to the side in obvious interest. “Y’like…rap? Oh, gahd, tell me you don’t like rap. Or that thirteen-year-old chick with the Snakes and Barrels hair – I wanna kill that fuckin’ kid.”   
  
“Rebecca Black? Good _god_ , no.” He would have rather had his ding-dong chopped off than listen to her (and he knew he was serious when he began to _think_ like Murderface, never mind speaking like him). “You know, I could probably have her killed, if that would make you guys feel more secure.” He’d been considering it anyway; her viral video, and its subsequent parodies, were taking precious attention away from Dethklok.   
  
“Huh.” Pickles scratched his chin. “Nah, dat’s okey. So you don’t like anything shitty…that’s good. Whaddya like?”   
  
Charles rubbed the back of his neck, self-conscious all of a sudden. “You understand that this doesn’t leave this room, correct?”   
  
“Yeah. Spill, dood.”   
  
“All right.” He sighed, closed his eyes in a momentary prayer to whoever manned the controls up there that he wouldn’t completely fuck this up, and opened his mouth to make what might have been the biggest mistake of his life (or a bonding experience, but he didn’t tend to hold out hope for such things). “I’m, uh, a bit of a musical enthusiast.”   
  
“Sure. You just said…wait.” Charles could practically hear the gears grinding in Pickles’s head as his eyes narrowed. “Musicals like _showtunes?_ Those kinds’a musicals?”   
  
Charles took in a breath and let it out, steeling himself for mockery. “Yes, Pickles, musicals as in showtunes.”  
  
“Dood!” Suddenly, Pickles was out of his seat, throwing his arms around Charles. To say that he was surprised was a massive understatement, but Charles patted his back anyway – a little awkwardly, but it was the thought that counted. “You like musicals, too?”   
  
“What do you mean, _too?_ ” With some difficulty, Charles extricated himself from Pickles’s octopus-esque hold and stepped back to look at him. “Is this some form of mockery, or are you actually serious?”   
  
“Serious like a heart attack, man.” Pickles held up a right hand, although he didn’t seem to know what to do with it, waving it around a few times before slapping it against his leg. “Know what I was drummin’?”   
  
“I have no idea.” Come to think of it, the beat sounded a little familiar, but Charles couldn’t quite parse it. “I’m sure I’ll recognize it once you tell me what it is.”   
  
“All right.” Pickles shrugged and looked down, as though expecting laughter in return. “It’s from this musical called Thirteen. Kinda new, and the song’s got a cool drumbeat, so…I dunno, dood. I wanted to try it out.”   
  
“Wait. Did you just say _Thirteen?_ As in the bar mitzvah musical, Thirteen?”   
  
“Yeah.” Pickles blinked at him. “You know it?”   
  
“Know it?” Sometimes, he could swear the band didn’t know him at all…well, all right, most of the time. “Pickles. I _saw_ that show when it first came out.”   
  
“No _way!_ You’re lyin’.” The drummer gave his head an emphatic shake, sending his dreadlocks flying.   
  
“I’m absolutely serious.”   
  
“Oookay. If you really saw Thirteen, then what song was I drummin’?”   
  
“Hold on a minute.” Charles closed his eyes and tapped his fingers against his thigh, mentally re-creating the drum line. “Dun. Dun, dun, da-dun-dun-dun…was that Opportunity?”   
  
“Right, dood!” No one could possibly be that enthusiastic and survive, but the big grin on Pickles’s still-living face attested to the fact that he survived weird shit all the time. “Opportunity! The beat’s so fuckin’ _metal_. When’d you see the show?”   
  
“When you went to the Amazon,” Charles answered. “I had a bit of time while you five went off to get high off unauthorized and highly dangerous substances, so I decided to indulge in a little hedonism.”   
  
“Wha’?” Pickles asked. His jaw dropped open a little.   
  
“I went to see the musical when you all were off inhaling that Yopo business.”   
  
“Oh, gotcha.” Pickles nodded. “Did you like it?”   
  
“Yes.” Charles’s half-smile grew to, quite frankly, massive proportions on his face. “I found it incredibly enjoyable, but it still doesn’t hold a candle to Cole Porter.”   
  
“Cole Porter!” Pickles shouted, his eyes lighting up with manic enthusiasm. “You mean like…hold on.” He hopped back behind the drum set and raised his sticks. “Start listenin’. See if you can tell which one this is from.”   
  
Charles closed his eyes as Pickles started pounding out a beat – sort of slow and jazzy at first, almost reminiscent of someone doing an instrumental solo, but it sped up quickly. _Dun-dun-dun dunnn, dun-da-dun-dun…_ He opened his eyes and shook his head. “That sounds more like a high-school marching band’s drum line than anything by Cole Porter.”   
  
“Nah, you’re not listenin’ hard enough, dood. Try again. Think _sin_.”   
  
“Sin? What does that have to…” Pickles started up again, and Charles’s train of thought trailed off in a sort of confused verbal question mark. He concentrated harder this time, trying to find the base beat, and frowned. _Sin._ If the beat matched the clue, then… “Blow, Gabriel, Blow?”   
  
“Good jahb!” Pickles bounced out of his seat and clapped Charles on the back, grinning widely. “You like Anything Goes, too? It’s the best.”   
  
“So it is,” Charles said, nodding. “Porter was definitely a musical genius, albeit one with a fairly dirty mind.”   
  
“Whaddya mean?” Pickles asked as he scratched his dreads, one eyebrow lifting in confusion. “’S’pretty tame stuff, even for the thirties.”  
  
“You think so? Have you ever listened to the Beaumont Revival of Anything Goes?” Charles cleared his throat and sang a few lines in a high, firm tenor. “We’re all alone, no chaperone can get our number. The world’s in slumber; let’s misbehave.”   
  
The drummer’s eyes bugged out in a way that was, quite frankly, hilarious. Charles was hard-pressed to keep from laughing as Pickles plunked back down onto his drumming stool. “No _way_. I never heeard that one.”   
  
“Well, it’s in there. And how about Let’s Do It? ‘Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it’…the beat’s a little too slow to be racy, but the lyrics definitely do the job.” They also served to make anyone not in the know piss themselves laughing, as Charles had found out to his chagrin during a karaoke night in law school. It wasn’t his fault the machine had Porter, or that it was a weakness of his.   
  
Damn _professors_ weren’t supposed to laugh, either, but he supposed that was water under the bridge by now. Sort of.   
  
“Dood, dat’s _racy._ Props to Porter. That was pretty metal.” Pickles nodded in absolute certainty. “Hey, you think if I played the beats to one of these songs at a concert…?”   
  
“Then Nathan would kill you and Murderface would urinate on your grave,” Charles finished for him. “Do you really want to put yourself through all that hamburger time?”   
  
“Nah. I just wanted to see what you’d say. That was pretty brutal, though – you think we could do an album cover where I’m gettin’ chopped into pieces?”  
  
“We already did that,” Charles reminded him. “Two years ago.”   
  
“Oh, right.” Pickles blinked woozily and scratched at his head again. “Boy, am I stoned.”   
  
“You’re always stoned, Pickles. How is this time any different?”   
  
“Right now, I’m stoned and playing the drums with my manager. Drum _musicals._ Hey, chief?”   
  
“Yes, Pickles?”   
  
“I’m prob’ly gonna pass out soon. You mind not tellin’ the guys what we did in here?”   
  
Charles briefly reflected on the fact that that sounded very much like a sexual reminiscence before replying. “Absolutely. Your secret is safe with me.”   
  
“Sweet. High ten, dood.” Pickles stood up again and stood in front of Charles for a moment, invading his personal space, then pressed a fast, sweet (literally – the sweet smell of weed was almost overpowering enough to give Charles a contact high) kiss against his mouth. “Oh, man. Musical nerds are hot.”   
  
“Uh, yes. Yes, they are.” Charles patted his shoulder, feeling his entire body flush red from scalp to toes. “Come to my office sometime and I’ll play Let’s Misbehave on my computer. No one has to know.”   
  
“Mm. Metal, dood.” Pickles grinned dopily, swayed, and flopped down onto the floor, snoring.   
  
Charles bent down, rubbed his back a little, and went to go finish Skwisgaar’s penis protection papers.


End file.
